If Congress makes good on its promise to repeal parts of Obamacare, by 2019 an estimate 2.55 million Texans would no longer have coverage, resulting in greater financial pressure on local governments, healthcare providers and the insured, according to a new public health study.

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Saturday is the opening of the second part of the divided season on ducks in the South Zone, which includes all of the coastal and adjoining counties. It could not come at a better time as conditions have changed dramatically from two weeks ago when the first part of the season closed.

It looks like Santa will be taking a different route this year. The Santa Hustle race series, known for dressing its participants in Santa hats and fluffy white beards, has developed a new course for its Galveston race, scheduled for Dec. 18.

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Today, marks a century since the passing of Nicholas Joseph Clayton, the premier architect of historic Galveston. The island wouldn't be the place it is without his legacy of talent which continues to influence building design today.

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Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky wrote that “The world will be saved by beauty,” which leads us to ask two rhetorical questions: first, does this mean that the world is lost and, second, is ugliness to blame for its condition? Rhetorical questions require no answer, but what we can see for ourselves is that in their multiple forms — artistic, personal and moral — beauty and ugliness contend for cultural supremacy. Today the general consensus among humanistic thinkers is that a “cult of ugliness” prevails.

The recent election was also a referendum on the medical, and yes, recreational use of marijuana. Voters in Nevada, Massachusetts, Maine and California approved the recreational use of marijuana; bringing the number of approving states to eight. Florida, North Dakota and Arkansas will now join others that allow the medical use of it. With chronic marijuana use, questions about its influence on a person’s health are being debated.

Dr. Gulshan Sharma has been appointed vice president and chief medical and clinical innovation officer of the University of Texas Medical Branch’s health system. Sharma, who holds the Sealy & Smith Distinguished Chair in Internal Medicine, will retain his position as director of Pulmonary and Critical Care and Sleep Medicine. Sharma, who joined the medical branch in 2004, received his medical training at Dayanand Medical College in India. He completed an externship at the medical branch, his residency in Internal Medicine at Henry Ford Hospital, and a fellowship in Pulmonary and Critical Care in the Department of Internal Medicine at Yale University School of Medicine.

With increasing literature about the role of inflammation and diet in the etiology of Alzheimer’s disease, may I suggest you read a new book, “Eat to Beat Alzheimer’s.” It offers a creative path forward to those of us with a strong desire to avoid the threat of developing Alzheimer’s disease.

Type I diabetes or juvenile diabetes is often diagnosed by measuring blood glucose levels during the life threatening acute onset of this disease, diabetic ketoacidosis. This often comes as a surprise to parents, requiring a trip to the hospital followed by rapid lifestyle adjustments and a serious increase in their health care expenses. A way to test for type 1 diabetes before the onset of symptoms would help prevent the dangerous consequences and give families time to be educated and prepared. Scientists in Germany have developed an easy and relatively inexpensive screening test that can be performed on infants that would predict the development of type 1 diabetes.

The University of Texas Medical Branch’s Alejandro Castellanos-Gonzalez received a $100,000 grant from the Grand Challenges Explorations initiative funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Castellanos-Gonzalez and his team are working on a research project aimed at defining targets for drug development against a diarrhea causing parasite. Diarrhea kills approximately 2,000 children every day and the intestinal parasite Cryptosporidium is one of the most prevalent causes of diarrhea in the world. Castellanos-Gonzalez has a novel method to study the function of potential drugs against the parasite.

When the Galveston National Laboratory opened months after Hurricane Ike in 2008, leaders knew researchers there would battle infectious diseases on a global scale — forever changing the status of the University of Texas Medical Branch.

The biggest philanthropic effort in the University of Texas Medical Branch history, a $450 million Working Wonders Campaign, officially concluded last week, having exceeded the goal by raising $450,954,995 for various initiatives at the university. Medical branch President Dr. David L. Callender said the campaign was “transformative,” enabling the medical branch to construct the new Jennie Sealy Hospital, add 153 new endowments and to fund or sustain several major research programs. Medical branch faculty, staff and retirees contributed $13.3 million.

It is well established that tumors can induce our own cells to form new blood in a process called angiogenesis. This supplies tumors with the nutrients and oxygen to support their growth. But in 1999, scientists hypothesized that tumor cells themselves can form blood vessels, a process called vasculogenic mimicry or VM. That started a fierce, but healthy, debate about how tumors acquire their blood supply. Nearly 17 years later, a drug that targets VM has gone into clinical trials and if successful would go a long way in bolstering the case that this phenomenon contributes to tumor growth.

There’s a saying that laughter is the best medicine, but recent work suggests that friends and family may be. What is the take-away for folks who may have few of either? Is there anything they can do to set themselves up for a better outcome?

Thanksgiving, Christmas and Hanukkah can be particularly difficult for those going through them without their loved ones. Grief can be magnified by holiday sights and sounds, causing memories to come flooding back in on these and other special days.

The holiday season is here. It’s not only a time of celebration, fun and family, but it’s also a time of year when youth are more likely to experiment with drinking alcohol. According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, when students are out of school — winter holidays, spring break and summer — they are more likely to try using alcohol for the first time. You can help youth make a healthier choice by restricting their access to alcohol.

My life is pretty busy. With work, family and other obligations, I don’t get out much. We recently took a vacation after the death of my dear mother-in-law, who passed at 95-years-old, after a nearly decadelong struggle with Alzheimer’s. We definitely needed a break.

Any cancer patient will tell you that the fear of a cancer’s recurrence is with them all the time. For many, follow-up can involve invasive or uncomfortable testing that serves as an ongoing reminder of cancer’s threat. For patients with lung cancer, the follow-up usually means regular CT scans to look for tumors. Now there is a promising new breath test that detects the presence of certain markers that are only present in patients with lung cancer. How is that for patient-friendly?

Artifacts and documents from 15 different University of Texas Medical Branch School of Medicine alumni will be on display on the third floor of the Moody Medical Library for the next two months. The stories of the former students are told through photographs, letters, diaries and other materials that make up part of the Truman G. Blocker Jr. History of Medicine Collections. The exhibit includes displays on Dr. Herman Barnet III, a World War II fighter pilot who would become the first African American admitted to medical school in Texas, Dr. Edith Bonnet, the first woman intern at John Sealy Hospital, and Dr. Felix Miller who spent a day in 1911 patching up soldiers in Pancho Villa’s army, among many others.

Cancer. A big word in a small package. And it doesn’t discriminate. Young. Old. Big. Small. Celebrity. Janitor. Mother. Father. Daughter. Son. It comes in many forms. Skin. Lung. Blood. Breast. Colon. Pancreatic. Brain. It just doesn’t care. Cancer, in all its forms and in all its victims, doesn’t care what you think, feel, want or dream. It is a destroyer of the normal and the unusual; of goals, ambitions and lives.

It seems that every time we look up, we hear about another infectious disease threatening people somewhere in the world. We really pay attention to the exotic threats — like Ebola and Zika — that tend to get heavy media coverage. But sometimes we forget some of the common diseases that occur periodically like outbreaks of measles or the yearly influenza outbreak.

Although there has been much hope for the educational potential of interactive media for young children, there are also fears about their overuse during this crucial early period of rapid brain development.

Dr. Courtney Townsend is the new president of the American College of Surgeons, becoming the 97th leader of the largest organization of surgeons in the world. Townsend, who holds the Robertson-Poth Distinguished Chair in General Surgery, has served as editor-in-chief of the “Sabiston Textbook of Surgery: The Biological Basis of Modern Surgical Practice” since 2000 and was also the editor of “Surgical Oncology.”

The epidemic of opioid abuse and the resulting increases in overdoses and deaths have been front and center in the news for quite some time. Now a little appreciated effect called hyperalgesia, an increased sensitivity to pain, can make these drugs less effective for chronic pain leading people to take higher and higher doses seeking relief, increasing the chance of addiction. Opioids can actually prolong and amplify pain rather than relieving it.

No one plans to get sick or injured, but everyone should. I’m not talking about literally putting yourself in unhealthy or dangerous situations. I’m talking about having health insurance for when illness or injury inevitably strikes you or your family.

The most common complaint in primary care practice is pain. Did you know there are several kinds of pain? From the time we were children, we learned the first kind of pain that is nociceptive pain. This is produced by tissue damage. It can be like a diaper pin stick (remember diapers that needed pins?), burn, cut, fracture, inflammation, or colicky pressure in our gut. “Ouch!” we cried as kids, with tears as such noxious stimuli damaged us and we searched for comfort, a hug, a kiss, a Band-Aid.

Dennis Bente was in college when he read “The Hot Zone,” a popular thriller chronicling the deadly spread of the Ebola virus. As was the case with many future scientists, the best-selling book sparked the interest of Bente, who was studying to become a research veterinarian.

As the Federal Health Insurance Marketplace’s next open enrollment period approaches, the certified application counselors at Coastal Health and Wellness stand ready to assist Galveston County residents applying for coverage.

Headlines celebrate as new methods render one cancer after another as “treatable.” Heart disease may decline as statins and other medications are seen to be bringing new benefits, but chronic kidney disease remains on the rise with no such miracles in the offing. Why? In part, because of the fattening of America, a process which leads to kidney problems, especially by way of diabetes spawned by obesity, health care experts say.

It’s time for the University of Texas Medical Branch’s Fall/Halloween Carnival. The festival will be from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. Friday on the Moody Medical Plaza. The annual event on the medical branch’s campus is for children 12 and younger and will have games, prizes, snacks and a best costume contest. There is no admission charge, but attendees are encouraged to take a can of food that will be donated to local food banks. The carnival is sponsored by the Osler Student Societies and the UTMB Student Government Organization. Parking will be available in the parking lots across from Levin Hall, 11th and Market streets.

You never know when you walk into a public restroom what you will be using to dry your hands. The options usually are standard or high speed air dryers or paper towels. The battle about which method is more hygienic has heated up again with a recent study showing that high speed dryers spread a virus 60 times more than standard air dryers and 1,300 times more than paper towels.

Domestic violence is not an argument between partners or family members. It’s not about “anger management” or one person physically injuring another person. Domestic violence is a systematic pattern of power, control, domination and fear to gain control of a relationship, by an intimate partner, household member or parent. This control may include many types of violence and abuse — physical, sexual, psychological, emotional, verbal, financial and spiritual.

For the second year in a row, the University of Texas Medical Branch’s MakerHealth Space won “Best in Class” at the 2016 World Maker Faire in New York City earlier this month. The medical branch had a booth at the meeting with examples of projects from the MakerHealth Space. The MakerHealth Space is where all medical branch staff, students and faculty can develop medical devices by either modifying an existing product or design and build prototype medical devices using 3D printing, laser cutting, textiles, electronics, power tools and much more. Medical branch nurse Debra Flynn, for example, made an adjustable patient shower sleeve from a shower curtain to keep patient wounds dry. Another project, by the medical branch’s Dr. Lara Reichert, repurposed a baby doll into an infant tracheostomy simulation device that helps train physicians to better perform the procedure on infants.

A study of Icelanders has revealed that the loss of 12 letters of genetic code in a single gene substantially reduces the risk for a heart attack and also lowers cholesterol levels. Heart attacks happen when the flow of oxygen rich blood through a coronary artery to a region of the heart muscle is blocked. Without blood flow, the muscle in the deprived region of the heart will begin to die and is replaced by scar tissue resulting in permanent damage to the heart.

The next Sci Café discussion, “Understanding Alzheimer’s disease: The Race is on,” will be at 5:30 p.m. Oct. 27 at Mod Coffeehouse, 2126 Postoffice St., in downtown Galveston. Leading the discussion will be Kelly T. Dineley, associate professor in UTMB’s Mitchell Center for Neurodegenerative Disorders, department of pathology, and Lei Lu, associate professor of neuropsychology, department of neurology.